he face is of infinite
delicacy, but the body evinces strength. These forms ought to disgust
one for ever with the shadows and monkeys _a la Pompadour_. Let us adore
grace, but not separate it in everything too much from strength, for
without strength grace soon shares the fate of the flower that is
separated from the stem which vitalizes and sustains it.

[3] Quatremere de Quincy, Dissertation upon the Antique Statue of
Venus Discovered in the Island of Milo. 1836.

[4] Millingen: Ancient Inedited Monuments. Fol. 1826.

What a train of accomplished women this seventeenth century presents to
us! They were not all politicians. Women who were loaded with
admiration, drawing after them all hearts, and spreading from rank to
rank that worship of beauty which throughout Europe received the name of
French gallantry. In France they accompany this great century in its too
rapid course; they mark its principal epochs, beginning with Charlotte
de Montmorency and ending with Mdme. de Montespan. The Duchess de
Longueville has perhaps the most prominent place in that dazzling
gallery of lovely women, having all the characteristics of true beauty,
and joining to it a charm exclusively her own.

In early girlhood she had been taken, along with her elder brother, the
Duke d'Enghien, to the Hotel de Rambouillet; and the _salons_ of the Rue
St. Thomas du Louvre were probably the most fitting school for such a
mind as hers, in which grandeur and finesse were almost equally
blended--a grandeur allied to the romantic, and associated with a
finesse frequently merging into subtilty, as indeed may be discerned in
Corneille himself, the most perfect mental representative of that
period.

To follow step by step the course of Anne de Bourbon's life at this
period of it through all its earliest rivalries, would involve the task
of recording the manifold caprices of a tender, yet ambitious nature, in
which the mind and heart were unceasingly dupes of each other. It would
be like an attempt to follow the devious path of the light foam and
laughing sparkle of the billow--

"In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua."

Our purpose lies mainly with her political life, but ere entering upon
it we will give a short but comprehensive view of her character in the
words of one who, more than anybody else, had the means of judging her
correctly--La Rochefoucauld. "This Princess," writes the Duke,
"possessed all the charms of mind, unit